


grant me wings that I might fly

by mercurialMalcontent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1356064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurialMalcontent/pseuds/mercurialMalcontent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You tell Jake stories about yourself, where you got your name, edited so as not to scare him too much. You hope that someday you can tell him the real version. You play adventures with him, teaching him the skills he needs to survive outside the tower. You try to enjoy it, even though you know that your clock is ticking and you have so much left to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grant me wings that I might fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skylark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/gifts).



You were not expecting to start raising a child at the age of eighty-five.

Well, that's not entirely true! You'd had inklings that something important would happen around this time; all of your studies and discoveries pointed to it. But you never actually internalized the idea of dealing with a kid, it was always something that would happen "someday", a time so vague and far away you never had to think about it. Time got away from you, as it does -- that's you, always knowing exactly where you are but always late for dinner! -- and suddenly you were looking down the long barrel of old age with nary an infant in sight.

("You were old a long time ago," John laughs when you tell this to him. He laughs even harder when you tell him he's a geezer, and reminds you he's technically younger than you. You noogie him, for old time's sake.)

But here you are, your arms full of the kiddo that had landed with a bang two days into your visit to your brother. You huff and hoist the little guy higher on your hip. "You sure weren't the birthday surprise I was expecting," you tell him. He beams at you, and you can't help but smile back a little.

\--

Four months later, John is dead. It was sudden, his son tells you, he died instantly, the little girl that landed is fine. You wish you could be glad of that, but there's a hollow ache in your chest. You both knew you'd outlive him, but it feels wrong.

You don't realize you're crying until little Jake looks up at you and bursts into tears, himself.

\--

Your grief fades as your attention is consumed by thwarting the Batterwitch and raising Jake. You're not sure which is harder!

You'd thought that after mentoring two moody, difficult teenagers to the cusp of adulthood, raising a toddler would be a piece of... something easy. You were incredibly deluded!

Jake gets into everything. He climbs shelves, digs through drawers, chews on cords, and pushes every button and pulls every lever his pudgy fingers can reach. In the past week, he's destroyed five beakers and two prototypes, spilled milk onto your notes, and painted his room with his own shit. 

And the worst part is that you can't reason with a toddler. You know, you've tried! You've also demanded, begged, and cajoled, and nothing works! It's like having a puppy again, but about fifty times more destructive and with added backtalk, and you can't exactly stick a kid in a kennel. God knows you've been tempted!

Your patience wavers dangerously when Jake sneaks up and snatches a pen clean out of your fingers, leaving a big streak of ink over the contract you were signing. You take a deep breath and let it out slowly before you turn to face him. "Hey kiddo, that was pretty rude! Give your gramma the pen back now."

Jake giggles and waves the pen like it was a sword. "No!" He's told you no seven hundred and fifty-four times this week. It's his favorite word right now. 

You smile as pleasantly as you can manage and hold out your hand. "Gramma's not going to be buying your recalcitrant butt a whole lot of Cheerios anymore if she doesn't get this contract signed, so hand it over."

"No!" Seven hundred and fifty-fifth time. Jake beams and runs off, or tries to, anyway; you give space a pinch so instead he ends up running past you and you can snag the back of his shirt.

You tug the shocked child back and hold out your hand again. "Give gramma the pen, Jake."

Jake scowls, quite abruptly unamused with the turn his game has taken, and tries to hold the pen out of reach. "No!" Seven hundred and fifty-sixth time. Jake flails at you with the pen as you try to take it. "NO!"

Seven hundred and fifty-seventh time, and you've had enough. "Don't you tell me no young man! You can't have it and that's final!" You grab the thing out of Jake's hands. He stares at you in shock that shifts into outraged wailing. "You brought this on yourself! Crying won't help you!" He flops onto the floor and wails even louder. "Stop blubbering, you little--!"

You catch yourself before your voice rises into a shout. You clap your hands over your mouth and sink into a chair, horrified that you'd almost yelled at a small child who wouldn't understand why.

\--

Fortunately for your sanity, Jake quickly starts using words other than no, and before you know it he's using almost complete sentences. You're proud as punch the day he takes a spill off a chair and, instead of crying, yells, "Damn it all to heck!" You also realize that unless you want precocious little boy to sound like a sailor, you need to watch what words you use around him. 

You resolve in this matter lasts maybe a day and a half before you're back to using just as much salty language as you ever did. Jake picks up lots of interesting new words, and you cackle gleefully every time he breaks out with a damn or a hell in his piping little voice.

What delights you even more, though, is how he picks up your shop talk. Not consistently, no, and certainly not accurately, but it’s such fun to listen to him go on about quark colliders and particle bamboozlers, or to watch him stalk invisible prey through your laboratory, using a stick he dragged in from the forest as a makeshift gun.

You need the amusement. The Batterwitch has finally outmaneuvered you with hostile takeovers of your subsidiaries and infiltration into the upper echelons of your company. You could stand your ground and fight, and some part of you itches to do so! But you have to face the facts -- you’re no spring chicken, and you still have your little shaver to raise. Let young folks like Dave and Rose continue on in the front lines, keeping the Batterwitch distracted while you continue your explorations.

It rankles all the same, even when you look at Jake to remind yourself why you’re taking the sensible course of action.

\--

Once you move permanently to the tower laboratory on that distant island, you and Jake settle into a regular routine of lessons, stories, and explorations. You would rather not bring him along with you on the latter, but he’s still much too young to be left at home. Neither can you delay in your research! 

So you bring little Jake along with you, trying and failing to impress upon him the importance of staying quiet in the jungle, of moving silently. He tries, but he’s frustratingly young and full of more words than a set of encyclopedias. You tune him out as best you can and keep a tight grip on your rifle.

And you’re fine, for the most part, there are some tense moments, but the glimpses Jake catches of the lurking monsters that track your every step are enough to quiet him for minutes at a time. You make three, five, fifteen little expeditions with little incident; Jake turns moving quietly into a game, and you reward him with movies when you both return home.

When the inevitable happens, Jake is the reason you aren’t taken completely by surprise.

“Grandma,” he whispers, tugging at your sleeve.

You tap him lightly on the head. “Focusing, Jake,” you murmur, as you scan the trees ahead.

“But Grandma,” he whispers again, more urgently. “There’s a-- GRANDMA LOOK OUT!”

You push Jake to the ground as you throw yourself down beside him. The claw of one of those unholy crab creatures snaps at the air where your head was. You twist to bring your gun up, but your back flares with pain and you yelp.

The monster is about to swing at you again when Jake pops to his feet. “Hey, you great ugly beast! HEY! You gobsmacking monstrosity!” He jumps up and down, waving his arms. “Can’t catch me!”

You try to yell at Jake to run, run home, but it comes out a pained gasp. Jake scampers away, the crab thing lurching after him. You grit your teeth and slowly, so slowly, too slowly push yourself upright.

“Neener neener!” Jake yells as he darts from one piece of cover to another, his voice only a little hysterical as the monster closes in.

You raise your rifle and take a deep breath. If you just… pinch space here, and fold there… steady on the trigger… give space a twist, there--

Your shot rings out. The monster lurches toward Jake -- but its head blooms red, and the lurch turns into a slow topple sideways, until the creature hits the ground with a resounding thud.

You stare, gasping, your voice frozen in your throat. You can’t see Jake, and your mind goes blank panic for the second it takes for him to pop his head out of the leafy cover he dove into. He’s ashy with terror, but when he sees you he charges out and barrels into before bursting into tears.

“We did it Grandma! W-We got that great whacking beast and k-killed it dead! Bang! Pow!” Jake punches the air a few times before he gets back to clinging to you. “N-nothing going to keep the Englishes down!”

You can only hug him and try not to shake. For the first time in your whole goddamn life, you feel too old.

You also feel that, young child or no, it’s high time you teach your boy how to shoot. 

\--

You teach Jake to shoot, to read, to write, to use a computer. You tell him stories about yourself, where you got your name, edited so as not to scare him too much. You hope that someday you can tell him the real version. You play adventures with him, teaching him the skills he needs to survive outside the tower. You try to enjoy it, even though you know that your clock is ticking and you have so much left to do.

You also start leaving Jake alone when you go out on expeditions to the ruins. You tell him that someone needs to hold down the home fort and defend it from invaders! Jake looks doubtful, and hurt, but he plays along the best he can, a good sport to the end.

It’s a relief to be alone sometimes. You’re a little ashamed at how glad you are to be in the ruins and doing your own thing, but you have to admit, you’ve missed this. You’ve missed not having to have your attention everywhere at once, lest your little dickens turn an inopportune dial. You’ve missed only having to worry about your own capacity for peril, and not that of a child’s. You’re free to explore, free to delve deep, and it almost tempts you to stay away for longer than a day at a time. 

Except that you couldn’t ever breech Jake’s trust like that. You only have to remind yourself of the look on his face when you return -- joy, relief, delight at the prospect of new and exciting tales -- and that irresponsible urge to stay away dissolves.

You tell Jake you love him every time you leave the tower.

When you time runs out, it’s not the surprise you thought it would be. Sure, you didn’t expect her to show up, a silhouette against the sunset at the door to the ruins, but there’s something so inevitable about it that you can’t even be upset. It’s just time, that’s all, and yours is up.

“Hey kiddo, long time no see.” Her bright fuchsia smile blooms in the darkness. “Why don’t you come to your mama and give her a kiss?”

That doesn’t mean you’re going to go out without a hell of a ring. You raise your rifle. “Kiss this, fishface!”

\--

You cry as the flames from your little fire shroud your grandma’s body. The tears are a slow steady drip drip drip you can’t seem to stop. You don’t think she would have minded, even though your crying made her uncomfortable. Tough as nails, your old granny! She’d probably forgotten how.

It doesn’t seem right that some big beast got her and punctured her like it did. Must have been something terrible to make holes like that. What kind of a mouth did a beast like that even have? Or maybe it was a great old set of claws, something to make the capricorns in the ocean flee in terror!

Golly, it must have been an epic battle, woman versus beast, human versus monster! Hell, it didn’t even have a chance to follow her as she dragged herself away. Grandma probably perforated the thing but good before it got her. Maybe someday you’d go to the ruins and find its bones! Wouldn’t that be something.

(If you find its bones you swear with everything you have you’ll kick them, scatter them, grab them up and fling them into the ocean for the capricorns to crunch.)

You scrub at your face with a sleeve and push those thoughts away. You tell yourself her stories instead, until you curl up by the fire and fall asleep, hoping with everything you have that one day you can be as big a hero as your grandma.


End file.
